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THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 22 & 29, 2014
the Radio turns o -the-cu surreal-
ism into something charged---with-
out even touching a guitar.
Adebimpe has a quietly wide vocal
range; he's the kind of singer who
doesn't register as an athletic, showy
presence, but when he wants to go for
big moments he can pull them o .
"Seeds" begins with "Quartz," a song
that, intentionally or not, echoes "Star-
ing at the Sun." Malone and Ade-
bimpe set up a wordless choral back-
drop paired with clapping sounds, a
bell, and a steady sixteenth-note bass
line that is not clearly a bass player or
a machine. In the opening, Adebimpe
sings out, playing romance straight,
with no twists, just long notes: "How
much do I love you? How hard must
we try to set into motion a love di-
vine?" The song then blooms, with
drums punching solidly in half time,
while a thrush of bells hovers around
Adebimpe's vocal. It seems to cata-
logue the doubts of a relationship that
doesn't sound new and is having trou-
ble moving forward.
It makes sense that TV on the Radio
has created a large organic audience,
big enough to sell out the Apollo but
not so big that the band has ever
had anything like a Top Ten hit. The
group's career is one that many bands
now would be wise to mimic---stay-
ing true to an idiosyncratic voice, not
taking o much time from work, and
simply carrying on. A di erent band
might take a song like "Lazerray"---a
charging, largely unadorned melodic
rock song---and license it for com-
mercials, looking for the kind of radio
hit that turns a band from big into
huge. They could likely write ten
"Lazerray"s and move into a bigger,
more exclusive field of successful bands.
If anything makes TV on the Radio
a New York band, it's the members'
refusal to do this, to highlight their
uncanny sense of texture and melody
and to be stubbornly unpredictable.
1
From the Sonoma (Calif.) Index-Tribune.
A resident in the 20000 block of Fifth
Street East wanted to report that his friends
were reading the Bible to him over the tele-
phone, which offended him. By statute, that
did not qualify as a crime, and the reporting
party was given advice on how to politely
terminate a phone call.
HISTORY IN REAL TIME
AS TOLD BY
THE NEW YORKER
A RANDOM HOUSE HARDCOVER AND e BOOK
WITH NEW PERSPECTIVES FROM
Jill Lepore, George Packer, David Remnick,
Zadie Smith, and many more.
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